The 1970s brought us the “Airport” movies, which inspired an entire new genre of movies, the Disaster Film. The 80s ushered in a new type of movie, the “satirical” movie. Right out of the gate in 1980 was “Airplane!”. Most of us have seen the movie at least once or twice. So many memorable lines came out of that movie, the most famous one “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley” after a character in the movie says “Surely you can’t be serious?!”.

In the past two weeks we’ve had two meetings in Hoover, a City Council meeting and a Board of Education meeting. Both had a disaster theme to them, specifically when it came to revenue.

The Council meeting on April 2 featured a report by a the Porter, White & Co. , an investment banking and investment management firm. The report was followed up by comments from Dr. Melinda Lopez, the Chief Financial Officer of the City of Hoover. She basically indicated that IF REVENUES DIDN’T CHANGE, the City of Hoover was headed for bad financial times.

One week and one day later, Hoover City Schools Chief School Financial Officer Tina Hancock gave the school’s financial status. The presentation was exceptional. She basically indicated that IF REVENUES DIDN’T CHANGE, Hoover City Schools was headed for bad financial times.

Hoover Video Live Stream

Uploaded by None on 2018-04-11.

After the meeting I asked Ms. Hancock if the figures were based on continuing to receive the $5M from the city. She answered yes they were.  Hoover City Schools was dependent on the City of Hoover.

So…this report, coupled with the city’s report the week before (nice timing by both parties *cough* *cough*) set us up for only one thing: Some sort of method for either raising revenue or cutting expenditures.

Neither the city’s report nor the school’s report were done on the fly. One was done by a company that sells bonds (the city report) and one was done by a Chief School Finance Officer. Both featured very informative slides giving dire projections. A couple of things should be noted regarding both reports. The city’s report ends in 2022, which is when a large debt payment also ends. This means that 2023 would have an increase in the General Fund. Both reports have a disclaimer “IF REVENUES DON’T CHANGE”. The school’s report goes to 2024, so a lot can happen in six years.

Again, both paint a bleak picture of the future IF REVENUES DIDN’T CHANGE. Hoover City School’s reserve fund, according to the report, will driop from $121M in 2018 to $29M in 2024.

One of the items being addressed is teacher compensation. Both Ms. Hancock and Superintendent Dr. Kathy Murphy emphasized that we were losing teachers to other systems, so we need to make sure they are compensated well. Flashback to 2007: Former Board member A.W. Bolt made the same statement, for which he was later heavily critized by the then City Council and then Mayor’s office.

Bolt said one of his highest priorities during his first year of service was the implementation of salary increases for teachers to stop their departure to neighboring school systems offering better pay.  

“I pushed for and the board quickly adopted a parity pay scale so we could tell our teachers ‘No one out there thinks more of you than we do,'” he said. “It took a chunk of money, about $2 million a year, but it’s something we needed in the overall strategy and was the wise thing to do.”    al.com 

It’s good to know not only where we are, but also how we got here – seems some either don’t know the history of Hoover City Schools and City of Hoover because they’re fairly new, or they choose to casually ignore it.

In speaking to people familiar with the human resources end of the school system, we’re losing more support staff to neighboring cities than teachers.

There will be many items voted on by the Board of Education over the next six years that will directly impact the school system.

Here’s the kicker: All of these decisions will be made by a Board who’s majority membership, three members, will have under 1 year experience beginning with the 2018-2019 school year..

Here’s the bigger kicker: On Friday the 13th, Dr. Murphy was named as one of the finalists for the Alabama Department of Education State Superintendent position. Right now she’s a heavy favorite to get the position. If that happens, that means that Hoover City Schools will have a vacancy for superintendent.

This superintendent will be chosen by a very inexperienced Board.  Earl Cooper is not seeking reappointment after serving two 5 year terms. Craig Kelley will be going into his final year of his first term. Deanna Bamman will be going into her fourth year. Amy Tosney was appointed in 2017 to fill Stephen Presley’s vacancy after he completed one term. Kermit Kendrick was appointed in late 2017 to complete the term of Jill Ganus, who resigned with two years left on her term. And a new member will be appointed on April 16. Of the six candidates who applied for Mr. Cooper’s spot, only one has attended a school board meeting. The rest have not (pet peeve of mine – if you’re going to apply for a position, should you at least have an idea of what you’re applying for?). The Council Education Committee doesn’t see this as a problem. Back to history. The last time a very inexperienced Board of Education hired a superintendent was in 2006, when three of the members had under one year of experience.

That Board hired Andy Craig, under who’s tenure, Hoover City Schools ran a deficit budget for many years.  It should be noted that a big reason for that was the cutting of funding by the City Council.  Ironically, should Dr. Murphy get the position, Mr. Craig will be working for her. As her Chief State Financial Officer.

Besides the appointment of a new Hoover City Schools Board of Education member, the April 16, 2018 Council meeting should be interesting. A shadow Facebook group has popped up calling itself Hoover Forward. This group seems to be under the impression that the mayor’s office wants to raise taxes, even though that has not been stated by anyone in the mayor’s office. The group doesn’t boast an explosive membership roster, but the founder of it submitted at letter to the editor of the Hoover Sun. Hoover Forward (which has a web site called forwardhoover.com) encourages people to show up on Monday night to let the city know what tax increases without discussion are wrong.  They are promoting it as a protest.

Now, where can we put all of the blame for this? Ms. Hancock actually touched on this as well. “And that (revenue projections) assumes the city does not annex any additional land or allow developers to move planned home sites…”.

We grew faster than we were able to thanks to a city that kept on gobbling up and annexing land.

 

Fun Fact: Of the new developments being built beyond the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, NONE OF THOSE STUDENTS WILL BE ZONED FOR TRACE CROSSINGS ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, yet they will be driving past the school when they go to their assigned school, South Shades Crest Elementary and Brock’s Gap Intermediate. Their web site has a link called “Schools Nearby”. Actually Trace Crossings, a K-5 school in 2018-2019 is NEARBY. It’s so NEARBY that it’s practically NEXT DOOR. But it’s not listed on their web site. The others are. Why? A topic for another post (and yes, it’s coming).  Here’s another interesting bit.  UPDATE: The president of Signature Homes, Jonathan Belcher, contacted me and wanted to clarify some of the zoning of the new developments: Everything northeast of Lake Wilborn is zoned for Trace. That includes approximately 140 homes within the Wilborn neighborhood, 200 homes in the Fleming neighborhood and 174 on parcels 4,6 and 10 that are across from the Met. So, a total of 514 which leaves 500 in Wilborn going to South Shades before including Blackridge.

Another fun fact: A former Board of Education member who was very instrumental during the rezoning talks now works for the company building those homes.

 

 

 

So, to summarize, lots to ponder.  Did the City and Hoover City Schools talk before giving each of their presentations?  The subject matter would seem to indicate they might have.

Here’s an article written by Jon Anderson when the worked for al.com from 2013 that explains the Lid Bill. It also has an interesting quote by the then Chairman of the Council Finance Committee regarding a sales tax increase and his stance on raising property taxes. Does he still feel that way?

Well, to the city and to the schools system, we have one more line from Airplane!

Original Post: 6:15am 4/16/18

Updated:  8:30am 4/16/18